So. Are you your body? And if so, how exactly does this work? Lets explore lots of confusing questions.
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00:00Are you your body?
00:02Well, kind of, right?
00:05But is there a line where this stops being true?
00:08How much of yourself can you remove before you stop being you?
00:13And does the question even make sense?
00:22Your physical existence is cells, trillions of them, at least ten times more than there
00:28are stars in the Milky Way.
00:30A cell is a living being, a machine made of up to 50,000 different proteins.
00:36It has no consciousness, no will, no purpose, it just is.
00:41But it is still an individual.
00:44Together, your cells form huge structures for jobs like preparing food, gathering resources,
00:50transporting stuff around, scanning the environment, and so on.
00:54If you extract cells from your body and put them in the right environment, they will continue
00:59to stay alive for a while.
01:01So your cells can exist without you, but you can't exist without them.
01:07If we take all the cells away, there is no you anymore.
01:12Is there a line where a pile of your cells stops being you?
01:16For example, if you donate an organ, billions of your cells will continue to live on inside
01:21someone else.
01:23Does this mean that a part of you became a part of another person?
01:26Or is this other body keeping a part of you alive?
01:31Or let us imagine an experiment.
01:33You and a random person from the street exchange cells.
01:37One at a time, your body gets one of their cells, their body gets one of your cells.
01:42At which point would they become you?
01:45Would they ever, or is this just a very slow and gross way to teleport you?
01:51Let's make this more complicated.
01:53The image of ourselves as a static thing is untenable.
01:56Almost all of your cells have to die during your lifetime.
02:00250 million have died since the beginning of this video alone.
02:05Between 1 and 3 million per second.
02:09In a 7-year period, most of your cells are replaced at least once.
02:15Every time your cell setup changes, you are slightly different than before.
02:19So a part of you is dying constantly.
02:22If you are lucky enough to become old, you would have cycled through roughly a million
02:26billion cells.
02:29So what you consider yourself is really just a snapshot.
02:33But sometimes cells are broken and don't want to die, questioning the very nature of
02:38the unity of our bodies.
02:40We call them cancer.
02:42They cancel the biological social contract and become basically immortal.
02:48Cancer is not an outside invader.
02:50It's a part of you that puts its own survival over yours.
02:53But you could also argue that a cancer cell becomes another entity inside us, another
02:57being that just wants to thrive and survive.
03:01Can we blame it for that?
03:02A chilling cell story is that of Henrietta Lacks, a young cancer patient who died in
03:071951.
03:09Usually, cells only survived for a few days in the lab, making research very hard.
03:15Henrietta's cancer cells were immortal.
03:17Over the decades, they were multiplied over and over again and used for countless research
03:21projects, saving countless lives.
03:24Henrietta's cells are still alive and overall have been grown to at least 20 tons of biomass.
03:30So there are living parts around the world from someone who has been considered dead
03:34for decades.
03:36How much of Henrietta is in these cells?
03:40What makes one of your cells you anyway?
03:43Maybe the information contained in it, your DNA.
03:47Until recently, it was believed that all the cells in your body had basically the same
03:51genetic code.
03:53But it turns out this is wrong.
03:56Your genome is mobile, changing over time through mutations and environmental influences.
04:01This is especially the case in your brain.
04:04According to recent discoveries, a single neuron in an adult brain has more than 1,000
04:09neurons in its genetic code that are not present in the cells surrounding it.
04:13But how much, you, is your DNA really?
04:17About 8% of the human genome is made up of viruses that once infected our ancestors and
04:22merged with us.
04:23Mitochondria, power plants of the cell, once were bacteria that merged with the ancestors
04:29of your cells.
04:30They still have their own DNA.
04:33An average cell has hundreds of them, hundreds of little things that are not really human,
04:38but they still kind of are.
04:40It is confusing.
04:43Let's backtrack a bit.
04:44We know that you're made up of trillions of little things, made from more little things
04:49that are constantly changing.
04:51Together, all those little things are not static, but dynamic.
04:55Their composition and condition is changing constantly.
04:58So we might just be a self-sustaining pattern without clear borders that gained self-awareness
05:04at some point and now has the ability to think about itself through time and space,
05:09but really only exists in this exact very moment.
05:14Where did this pattern start?
05:16With your conception?
05:17When the first human arose?
05:19When life first began conquering our small planet?
05:22Or when the elements that make up your body were forged in a star?
05:26Our human brains evolved to deal with absolutes.
05:30The fuzzy borders that make up reality are hard to grasp.
05:35Maybe ideas like beginning and end, life and death, you and me, are really not absolutes,
05:42but ideas belonging to a fluent pattern, a pattern that is lost in this strange and beautiful
05:48universe.
05:51The problem of who we are isn't just a question of our cells, but it's also a question of
05:56our minds.
05:58Just as our cells can be divided and separated from us, so can our very brains be divided
06:03and separated from us, while still in the skull.